A couple of great drops I’ve had the pleasure of imbibing over the Christmas break. Both well worth hunting down at your local bottle shop. Fingers crossed, this review should also buy me some time as I get the second half of my Christmas chardonnay reviews up. They weren’t kidding when they dubbed this time [...]
Yes, this is the same Bin 65 that sells nigh-on impossible volumes year after year and is often international drinkers’ first brush with the “sunshine in a bottle” style of Australian chardonnay. No doubt it’s a big seller, but as a drink, what’s it like? Will it ever capture the imagination of “serious” wine drinkers? [...]
If the words of industry spin doctors were to be taken as gospel, every wine drinker in Australia would be able to locate shiraz of Grange-esque power and complexity at less than $10 a bottle (and at 13-to-the-dozen) at every drive-thru in the nation. Or that sparkling wine of similar pedigree to vintage Dom or [...]
After wowing so many people last year with its unbelievable value (aka QPR – a wine’s quality price ratio), this year’s Hoddles Creek Estate pinot noir release was always going to have some lofty expectations to live up to. Winemaker Franco d’Anna was well aware of what the market was expecting pinot-wise from Hoddles Creek [...]
The day before trying this wine blind, the tasting group all rated the Vat 8 Deen de Bortoli Shiraz very highly (see tasting note a few days earlier). So when it came time to unmask this beauty, those who had enjoyed the shiraz weren’t surprised to see the name De Bortoli come up trumps again [...]
At this article’s time of writing, this chardy hasn’t officially been released on to the market, but I had the privilege of trying this over lunch at the Healesville Hotel (www.healesvillehotel.com.au) – a cozy little country pub sitting pretty in Victoria’s Yarra Valley that not only boasts sensational food and an award-winning wine list, but [...]
Wine can be pretentious, so it’s refreshing to taste wine that is pretension-free: unassuming drops that don’t pretend to be anything they’re not. Something like this very different wine. This isn’t the kind of drop that you’ll find sharing cellar space with first growth Burgundy or cases of Alsace riesling. Nor is it the kind [...]